While there are a number of apps for the iPhone that allow you to do limited voice recognition for looking up contacts and searching Google, Dragon dictation is the first to allow you to speak normally and turn your thoughts into text. Surprisingly, it does so with almost no mistakes.

What makes Dragon dictation particularly unique is that it requires no training to work. Most desktop applications require some training to work correctly. Typically you have to read paragraphs of text for it to become more accurate at understanding your speech pattern. Dragon dictation takes advantage of your data connection to upload your voice recording to the Dragon servers, where you can use more powerful computers to interpret your voice, and then sends the text back to your iPhone.

While it's not 100% accurate, my experience so far has been excellent. I find it to be at least as accurate as voice dictation software I use on my computer. It's certainly far more efficient than trying to use the virtual keyboard on the iPhone.

Once you're done recording, you can edit the text, and then choose to either copy to the clipboard send the contents as an e-mail, or send it as a text message. The clipboard function means that you can use Dragon dictation with any application on your iPhone.

Best of all, Dragon dictation is free. It's certainly one of the most useful apps on my iPhone paid or free.

The only negative feedback I've heard from other users is that, in order to better understand proper names that you use, it asks to upload the names in your address book. In the first version of the app, this was not an option; however, you now can choose whether or not to use this function.

So, if you have an iPhone, download Dragon dictation and give it a try. I think you're going to be impressed.